


Watershed

by shinewithalltheuntold



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Mentions of Canon Relationships, past helen/john - Freeform, sort of, told almost entirely from the perspective of the sanctuary characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-15 23:39:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11241669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinewithalltheuntold/pseuds/shinewithalltheuntold
Summary: Helen Magnus decides to build a second underground Sanctuary. And what better place than in the middle of nowhere Maine, where nothing eventful could ever happen?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this came about because...I don't even remember how this came about. I probably made some random comment about how amazing it would be if Regina Mills and Helen Magnus interacted, and my muse exploded. I do know that this fic would never have happened without the encouragement of liberalmasochist. I'm still not sure whether to thank her or curse her for that.

i.

The benefit of living through the same century twice was not only having a fairly good idea of where and when important things happened, but also where they _didn’t._ Not everything of course, but if one paid attention to world events, one could make at least a reasonable guess.

Helen Magnus had paid attention.

Now, she was reaping the benefits of that foresight.  It was ambitious – too ambitious, James insisted – to build two underground sanctuaries.  But Helen knew that in order for this to work, in order for her to succeed, she would need backup plans for the backup plans.

Hence the second sanctuary.  The first was to be in Old City, of course.  She would need to be able to travel easily back and forth when she rejoined the world in 2011, and Old City was more home to her than any of the places she’d lived in the past, even England.

The second location had taken longer to determine.  Not too close to the first; they needed enough distance that if one was discovered or damaged, the other would still be viable.  But when the calderas blew it was going to cause disruptions across the globe so she couldn’t have the second sanctuary too far, either.  So much was going to happen so quickly, and she had to be able to reach the backup sanctuary as fast as possible if need be.  Placing it across an ocean was not feasible.  So she and James, and a few others unknowingly, had determined where the calderas would cause minimal damage.  Then she had looked for places that would both fit her geographical needs and be out of the way of history.

And had ended up here.

“Are you certain, Helen?” James looked around with thinly veiled disdain.  He had never been a fan of the great outdoors, and this place was very outdoors.  Nothing but trees as far as he could see, even though he knew they were right up against the Atlantic Ocean. “There’s nothing here.”

“That’s precisely why this is the perfect place,” Helen countered evenly, refusing to give into the urge to remind James that they’d already had this discussion.  Multiple times. “Nothing is here, and nothing is _going_ to be here.  This part of the state stays mostly undeveloped.”

“And how will you explain people heading off into the woods with all the equipment you’ll be bringing?” There was one main road in the area, winding through the small towns sporadically dotting this part of the state, and he doubted the increased amount of traffic would go unnoticed.

“We’ll have to go slowly, of course,” Helen conceded. “But there are always campers and other hardy souls wanting to trek through the forest, make their mark.  We’ll build cabins in a few strategic locations to funnel the larger equipment we’ll need; we can tear them down again once we have everything moved underground.  And of course the transportation system will be the first priority.  Once that’s in place, we won’t need a presence on the surface at all, really.”

“Mmm…”James hummed noncommittally, still taking in what she was sure was every single detail of their surroundings down to the smallest leaf.  She loved that brilliant mind of his, but damned if he hadn’t used it to pick apart every piece of her plan for the past half-century.  As much as she knew she needed that in order to succeed, it was exceedingly irritating at times.  Like now.

“It’s the most logical place, James.” It really was.  It was far enough from Old City, but still in North America.  She had done a thorough survey of the land and the effort it would take to make it suitable to house an underground facility was far less than what was necessary for the primary Sanctuary.  The real work was going to be in setting up the transportation system, but that would come once both complexes were complete.

“Very well, my dear,” James gave in with his characteristic air of begrudging resignation. “You’ve made your argument; I’m convinced. We shall build your new Sanctuary here.”

Helen graced him with one of her most blindingly brilliant smiles. In a rare moment of unfettered glee, she flung her arms around him and hugged him tightly, heedless of the machinery pressing uncomfortably into her chest.  Her plan was coming together. She was going to make this happen, and she was going to make it happen here.

In the middle of nowhere on the coast of Maine, where nothing noteworthy had ever occurred or ever would.


	2. Chapter 2

ii.

John Druitt was bored.

It turned out that reliving an entire century involved doing nothing for long periods of time. A tedious proposition under the best of circumstances, but when one was forced to hide out or risk either running into one’s past self or irrevocably damaging history, it was absolutely, mind-numbingly _boring._

Although, thinking back to his first couple of decades in the past, there were worse things than boring.  Because the EM dampening field had dissipated at the very last second, when he teleported he had landed nearly a year after Helen.  It had taken close to three months to discover the truth of what had happened to Adam Worth, and in the end he had been forced to go to James for answers.

Regaining Helen’s trust, allowing her to run literally hundreds of tests to ensure that he had left the energy creature behind in 2011, and then a hundred more to develop a serum that would protect him from being re-infested….looking back on it now was a blur of needles and chemical concoctions setting fire to his blood.  Of spewing vitriol in screaming matches that lasted hours and resentful silences that lasted weeks.  And then, finally, of quiet acknowledgments and honest apologies and the painful but freeing realization that they could never go back to what they were.

Instead, they moved forward together as something new.  Something more than friends and less than lovers, at once simpler and more profound than what they had in the past.  Than anything he had ever known.  He gave her companionship, a shoulder to lean on (or more likely to beat in frustration) when the inaction of watching the horrors of The Wars unfold whilst being helpless to stop it became too much to bear.  She gave him purpose, a place in her grand and glorious vision of the future where their kind could be protected and safe from the meddling of governments and political agendas.

He became her right hand; James her left.  And together, with Hollow Earth technology and the unwitting help of the greatest minds of the century, they had built this marvel.  A place where abnormals would be truly safe from the evils of organizations like The Cabal and SCIU.  A place where they could be free.  An underground, self-sustaining Sanctuary.

Two of them, actually.

This one was not quite as grand as the one Helen was still completing under Old City.  But that was to be expected.  The Old City Sanctuary was Helen’s baby, whether above ground or below.  This one, though, this one was his.  Not as sleek and futuristic; he still had too much of the Victorian gentleman in him for that.  This was much more like London, a tribute to a place and time long gone but never forgotten.  He liked to think it would have been the Sanctuary of The Five, a place where they could have experimented and learned and grown together.  Instead it was the Sanctuary of the three.  And in a few short decades, of the two.

He and Helen had talked about it, conspired to find ways to circumvent the loss of James. And of Ashley.  Huddled in the caverns of Hollow Earth as they hid with their pilfered stash of knowledge and technology, covered in the dirt of excavation, they had posited a hundred scenarios to cheat death.  None of them would work, and when James had realized what they were doing, he made them swear on everything they held dear that they would stop trying.  _Death was inevitable_ , he’d said.

_Easy to say when you weren’t the one left behind_ , Helen had countered.

_Not so easy when you know that you will die with words unsaid, wishes unfulfilled._ And he’d been looking straight at John, and he’d been right, and that was that.  John hadn’t seen him since, and doubted he ever would.  Some wounds didn’t heal.

“Breathe, child.” The old woman’s voice came from behind him, startling him out of his morbid musings. He turned to her with a smile as she made her way to him, more slowly now than those few decades ago when they first met.  She placed a gentle hand on his shoulder when she reached him and he allowed it.  She was one of the few people who knew what he was and still cared for him; he could not turn that away.  Still…

“You’re getting warmer.” The heat from her hand was already starting to make him uncomfortable but he made no move to escape it.  He needed the comfort of that moment as much as she.  And she had never once touched him long enough to burn him.

“Yes,” she said, and then she did remove her hand from him.  She looked at it; he wondered if she could see the flames beneath her skin. “The fire will take me soon.”

“I will miss this face.”  It was old, weathered from the elements and lined with years well-lived.  But her white hair was still full and impossibly long, her eyes the same deep warm brown as her skin and so full of life and love.  This face was all the more beautiful for all that it had seen and done, and he had grown accustomed to it.  He took great comfort in it.

“As will I,” she agreed solemnly.  But then a sly smile spread across her face and that mischievious twinkle brightened her eyes.  She winked at him. “But if you’re lucky, you’ll live long enough to see it again.”

He smiled back.  “One can only hope.  What brings you here, Grandmother?”

That wasn’t her name, of course.  But her name was sacred to her and she never spoke it aloud.  So when the village children started calling her grandmother centuries ago, she decided it was a good name and had made it hers ever since.“Something has happened on the surface.  Or rather, some _place_ has happened.”

Confused but intrigued, John followed her to the main control room, to the large screen that displayed the feed from the camera they had monitoring the entrance to the Sanctuary.  What he saw only magnified his confusion.  Moving in closer, he tried to make sense of the impossibility his eyes were showing him. 

“How is this possible?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice was calm but had an edge of curiosity and perhaps even a slight bit of uneasiness.  For a woman who wouldn’t tell him her age but had once hinted that she’d met Alexander the Great to be surprised by much of anything had his adrenaline up and going.  Which she clearly saw because her “You’re going to investigate?” was more of a statement than a question.

“Yes.” He had already pulled on his jacket and was heading out the door when she called after him.

“She won’t be happy.” He turned back and offered her a small smile.

“She’s rarely happy with me, Grandmother.” It was rude to turn his back on her, but he was too anxious to get outside and investigate so he kept talking as he backed out of the room. “Call her please? She’ll want to see this.”

“She will.  She’ll also want to scold you in person.”

“That she will.” But a scolding would be well worth the chance to investigate this impossibility that had landed on their doorstep.  Well, on their roof.

\--

“It’s a city.”

John watched as Helen stepped towards the screen, tracing her fingers over the image of the clock tower in the middle of the frame.  The broken clock tower – John had watched it for close to an hour during his jaunt to the surface and it hadn’t moved in the slightest.

“Technically, I don’t believe it’s large enough to qualify as a city,” he said. “Perhaps a town.”

He didn’t need to see her face to know she had just rolled her eyes at him. “A town that appeared out of nowhere.”

“Apparently.”

“That’s not possible.”

“And yet…” he gestured towards the screen.  She spun around to face him, shoulders tense and eyes hard.

“Are you sure you didn’t notice anything suspicious?”

“Suspicious as in what?  People moving in?  Razing the forest, erecting houses and businesses, moving furniture and equipment and God knows what else?” His voice was rising steadily, along with his agitation.  He knew she was frustrated and confused, but he wouldn’t tolerate even the hint that he had not been doing his job properly. “Helen, two days ago the only people within forty miles were a man and his son on a camping trip.  Yesterday, there was a sizable, fully intact town above us.”

“How?”

There was frustration and bewilderment in her voice but no blame this time, and it made him wish he had a better answer for her than the truth.

“I haven’t the slightest idea.”

Helen sighed and turned back to the monitor, to that broken clock.  “How long were you on the surface?”

“No more than five hours. I stayed on the outskirts of the town for the most part, except to plant the monitor,” he nodded towards the screen. It was the only view they had, and he’d hesitated to set up even that monitor.  He had no idea what kind of capabilities the inhabitants of this strange little town had and hadn’t wanted to alert them to his presence. By the same token, they needed _some_ kind of eyes into the town so he’d decided to take the risk.

“And before you lecture me,” he added. “I know it was dangerous.  Possibly even foolhardy, but I could not stand by idly and not act.  An entire town springing up overnight is not just a mystery, Helen. It’s a potential danger to what we’ve built here.”

“I agree.” He started a bit at that.  He knew Helen would come round to his point of view sooner or later, but he’d quite frankly been expecting later.  Two centuries, and she still managed to surprise him.   “What did you find?”

“Very little unfortunately.”  It was hard to gather information when you are trying to remain completely unseen in an unknown, unfamiliar environment.  “The inhabitants appear human; I saw no hint of anything abnormal.  Of course, five hours is not enough time for anything-“

“Absolutely not,” she cut him off before he could finish that thought.  “You are not going back up there. Not until we have more information.”

“A bit difficult to gather more information without going back up there, wouldn’t you say?” he asked.

“Perhaps,” she conceded, “but difficult is not the same as impossible.  We have a few sensors, and this monitor.  We’ll gather as much information as we can, try to develop at least a rudimentary plan of action before I’ll even entertain the notion of returning to the surface.”

He didn’t like it.  She was right, of course, but he really didn’t like it. And she knew he didn’t.  Knew him well enough to see that he was biting his tongue against all the pitfalls and potential dangers waiting could cause.  There was no use saying things she already knew.

“John,” she reached out and grasped his hands in hers, “I _know._ But this is the best plan we’ve got.”

He nodded, but didn’t relax at until she added, “whatever this is, whatever they are, we won’t let them destroy what we’ve worked so hard to build.  We _will_ figure this out.  Together.”

He gave her a small smile and gave her hands a little squeeze.

“Together.”

\--

“She’s going to kill him.”

John watched as the woman turned from the “Welcome to Storybrooke” sign to face the man being held down by this town’s version of law enforcement. 

The change was virtually instantaneous.  One moment, she was staring at the little boy as he fled, tears in her eyes. But by the time she had turned to face the boy’s father, her face was a blank mask apart from the rage burning in her eyes.

“We can’t stop her, John,” Helen said quietly. She had seen the same thing John had, and come to the same conclusion. “You know we can’t. Whatever this place is, whoever she is….we can’t interfere.”

“I am aware.” He was.  Helen’s reasoning was sound.  They had no idea what they were dealing with; a city surrounded by some as yet unidentified energy field that seemed to shield it from the sight of the outside world, a large group of people who appeared oblivious to the fact that they had just appeared out of thin air – by all rights they shouldn’t be on the surface at all yet.  They certainly couldn’t be seen.  Especially by the woman they had come to find out was the mayor of this little town.  Mayor Mills, the one with the Dalmatian had called her.  The only with any awareness of just how bizarre and out-of-place the town and all its inhabitants were.

They’d spent days obsessively watching the camera feeds and gathering what little data their sensors could provide.  Helen hadn’t liked it, but she’d finally agreed that they weren’t going to get the information they needed unless they placed monitoring equipment in some strategic places.  So they’d finally come to the surface in the early hours of the morning to install what they needed – as little as possible but as much as they could get away with.  They’d just finished installing the last sensor near the welcome sign when the father and son campers had come tearing down the road, the squad car quickly overtaking them.

They’d headed for cover, darting behind a group of trees that kept them hidden but allowed them to watch the unfolding drama.  Helpless to do anything _but_ watch.

“John, we need to go.  Now.”

They didn’t really.  They were safely out of sight of Mayor Mills and her lackey.  But they both knew what was coming next, and he didn’t imagine Helen had any desire to watch the inevitable knowing they were powerless to prevent it.  John felt a strange obligation to stay, to bear witness to the man’s last moments.  He imagined Grandmother would say that was his way of taking on guilt that wasn’t his to take.  And because Grandmother was usually right, he nodded softly and stood.  He heard Helen start to slip back into the forest and moved to follow her, when he heard the sound of the mayor’s heels on the pavement.  He looked back one last time.

The child was going to be fatherless soon.  He saw it in her eyes.  The madness.  She would not tolerate being thwarted, being denied.  She reminded him of some of the more despotic rulers he’d met over the centuries. 

She reminded him of himself, long ago.

But there was something else.  She…cared, about the child.  She was clearly not unmoved by his suffering.  And it made him wonder if her madness was of her own making, or thrust upon her unwillingly.  Perhaps, like he himself, it was a measure of both.

He didn’t know.  But he was going to watch.  He was going to learn.  And if the time and circumstances presented themselves, he was going to take action.

Whether that action would be to save her or end her, well, that was the question, now wasn’t it?


End file.
